Steve Jobs' last design: New Apple HQ pics Those who think that Apple is a strange cult will only have their suspicions confirmed by the recently released renderings of Apple's new Cupertino HQ published online yesterday. Apple HQ 1, credit Cupertino Council We've seen hazy pics of the building before, but the official images have just been posted on the Cupertino …
My though is that it's circular to trap Steve's ghost essence and channel it into the minds of workers. I think it's clear from the evidence:
1.Meticulously designed by a dying man
2.Apparent reality altering aura that blurs and influences colour balance and saturation.
3.Designed to be sealed up tight preventing any escape
4.Crewed by a slavish cult
But then why is that odd if your actually selling computers like appliances?
When you buy a toaster, TV, fridge, washing machine and so on do you look for a hatch to open them up?
While computers sometimes need memory and disk upgrades you tend to burn out your washing machine before you upgrade to a better model. This tends to be true of most people when it comes to computers, they stick with the factory specification.
"When you buy a toaster, TV, fridge, washing machine and so on do you look for a hatch to open them up?"
You know what, I often open my fridge, washing machine and toaster. I'd find them pretty bloody useless if I couldn't.
Similarly OS X Lion in fact, where I have to copy files to the LIBRARY, or edit the HOSTS file, but St. Jobs said that I am not allowed access to them. That's great, but it means that I cannot access the file server (needs HOSTS file update), or use Photoshop (needs files copied to LIBRARY)
... it would appear to rotate at high speed. Don't know if that's the reality-distortion generator in operation or the picture five years down the line after the earthly remains of His Jobsworth have been spinning with increasing agitation at its centre.
This is almost the perfect place to have windows that open. Air coming from the large park surrounding this low rise building? I'd hate working there without being able to crack the window. Maybe you wouldn't want to downtown where there are just cars passing under the window, but that looks like a fantastic place to open the window!
It's official: Steve Jobs is a dick.
It's hardly uncommon though is it? At my last place, we had windows that opened, but if you did dare open one, and the head of HR saw you, you would get summoned to her 'roasting room' (glass walled sound proof cubicle for 'interviews', although it felt more like a place you can silently ream someone out whilst everyone else stares) for re-education.
At the new place, there are no windows, just panes of glass, so at least the temptation has gone.
The best thing about a donut shape like this is that there are no corner offices, and most people will have some daylight coming into their space. That's a good thing. I wish I worked in a donut.
I suspect this will have been designed with a whole building environment management system which controls lights, temperature and fresh air supply, like you will find in most modern high-rise office buildings. In cases like that, being able to open a window is actually highly counter-productive.
Ive never known anyone who's enjoyed working at the Pentagon. I worked there on Temporary Duty for a week once. Alot of times you have to run files back and forth between offices, which can seriously suck if one office is on the E ring and the other one is on the A ring. Going to opposite ends of the building is still a pain, and half the doors on the courtyard Enlistedmen don't tend to dare to use. There's no policy that says we can't (to my knowledge anyway, they dont tell TDY alot) but Its like high heresy to cut across the courtyard. Wont save you much time either way.
... it would take for someone to say it.
>> Unlikely the architects would have wanted to have opening windows because it screws up the aircon....
Indeed, I expect a large space like this will come with highly specified environmental controls - not just temperature controlled, but maintained with filtered, temperature and humidity controlled air. Anything else would be a terrible place to work.
Opening windows work in small room, but when you get to larger rooms then you have the problem that for people away from the windows to get any air, those near the windows get "an excessive amount" of air - typically they get frozen in UK climates.
Glad someone stated the obvious. Of all the modern buildings I've worked in (quite a few in our company) none of them have openable windows. They're all bleedin bullet-proof affairs, welded shut with some form of adamantium!
Air con and security are normally stated as the reasons, but I reckon it's also to stop stressed-out project managers from hurling themselves to freedom.
"Unlikely the architects would have wanted to have opening windows because it screws up the aircon...."
Really? In quite a few modern buildings you get notices about not opening windows because it might mess with the supposedly tuned air-conditioning, even though in everyone's experience, the air-conditioning manages to have everyone either too hot or too cold, the automatic blinds/shades take on a life of their own, opening, closing, rolling up or down at the slightest provocation before finally giving up working after a fraction of their supposed lifespan, and the janitor is either permanently away or unable to get someone in to fix all of this.
A lot of architects that manage to put up this kind of vanity project are often drifting away from practical concerns in favour of aesthetics, as if the practical business (what architecture should actually be driven by) might dirty the nice pictures in the coffee-table book that is their portfolio. So, for example, you had the laughable situation where the toilets in one brand-spanking-new opera house were continuously out of paper because the architects and their interior design pals didn't want to ruin the look by having anywhere to put the TP.
In the end, the TP gets piled on the floor and ruins the look, anyway, but I guess the avatars in the mock-ups don't need to use the toilet. In the mind of the delicate architectural genius, toilets probably have no place in an opera house, anyway.
>The architects wanted the windows to open. Jobs said no. He had never liked the idea of people being able to open things.<
I'm beginning to think all those acid trips he did when younger were bad trips because my fallout from youthful tripping was open / touch & experience everything and want everyone else to also feel the wonderousness (I know but it's ok to invent words on acid), of the universe.
I kind'a like the building tho'.
"Jobs specially designed it so..."
No, he didn't. He gave a designer a list of things he wanted and then went off and screamed at the local planning committee until they said he could have it, then he came back to the office and stamped his little foot until the designer had a design ready. THEN he claimed all the credit for everything ever invented and then, thank god, he dropped down dead.
Jobs was not a designer, he was never a designer. He was a manager. From hell.
that Jobs was a pain to work with. Same with Ballamer and a lot of other high-level managers.
The design of every famous Apple iProduct was done by Johnathon Ive
The technical work and design behind the first Apples was done by Woz (and probably the other one). Further designs were done by other engineery types.
The OS that Jobs brought with him (OSX) was taken from NeXt- with the core based on BSD and the rest done by paid programmers. It was then given to Apple's larger pool of programmers who did more work on it.
Jobs wasn't a designer. He was a manager. Most importantly, though, he was almost certainly the Worlds Finest Marketeer.
I see, better to spend a bil or three on some god-hub type thing, than do a Bill Gates and give it to malaria research.
Anyway I think it's hubristic because it elevates Apple design to a kind of ubermensch thing, where everything has to be 'magical', when in fact it's just ordinary people making good stuff which could easily be rubbish.
1. What has he got against Windows? You forgot the boom-tish after the question mark.
2. Windows is ugly (no rounded windows, for example), not very user-friendly and something that made him cringe. He would never have let it through. Compare the Macintosh graphical-interface from 1985 with that of Windows 1995 and you will see the difference.
3. SJ hates the notion of people tinkering with his appliances. He was the very antithesis of Woz, who built computers that one could expand, tinker with and so on. This is one of the reasons that he didn't dislike SCSI too much. Easy to attach and detach. No screwdrivers necessary. Often no drivers even necessary (or they came the mac). The outside of the box is for users and the inside of the box is for trained Apple-authorised personnel.
that we all still have to be in the same building to work together - probably to make sure we're not shirking by using our Idevices all the time.
Mind you the Siri testing lab would be a good laugh: "Will you shut the fuck up" " I don't know how to shut the fuck up Dave" "No not you....
let me guess. Jobs is patenting iCirlces now?
i actually like the building. very nice. of course will not look anything like this unless we all get Glaucomas or Cataracts. Still, that would be a nice place to work.
our old office was a £1M building for 10 people... very nice. thanks to the recession we now work out of an industrial unit. no pool tables or large screen TVs with Sky for us any more... fuck you Natwest!!!
@"J. R. Hartley - What has he got against Windows?" - erm, looks like there are loads to me! he must secretly love windows.
I got a good laugh out of the pictures especially. The "huge hi-tech-looking halo in the forest" looks like it was dreamt up by a videogame designer. It is trite and ugly. It is risible! Peter Max could come up with a more sophisticated design.
This is the same "fashion sense" and/or aesthetic sensibility - or lack thereof - that thinks those Macs made with semi-translucent plastic were anything other than an eyesore!
But!
We could also say that the building, in the shape of a giant zero, neatly and accurately sums up Jobs' value as a person, and precisely reflects the sum total of his generosity, both philanthropic and personal, not to mention, additionally, spiritually.
Possibly it is not too late to have the shape altered, just a wee bit, so that it resembles, not a halo, but a toilet seat?
Let's hope so.
And no one has yet commented that, as with all other Jobsian devices, this one was designed by an Englishman - or at least, an English practice - Foster + Partners ...
And for reference, it's perfectly possible to design an office building with opening windows (see most office buildings that have "sustainable" aims), but it's fairly difficult on a building of this scale - not to mention if one has a ... difficult client ... who is direct in expressing his views ... and ... set in his ways ... ? Hmm. Sounds like someone I've read about ...
In late February, around the time of Jobs' birthday, Apple's show will begin. Pink and white plum blossoms will appear on stands of trees at the center of Apple's new campus, hinting at more to come.
A few weeks later cherry trees scattered strategically along walkways and at the edges of open glades will start to blossom.
Visitors arriving for new product introductions on Apple's campus will walk down a path lined with cherry trees -- the white blossoms contrasting with the dark green conifers behind them -- a sight that by April should be absolutely staggering.
As summer approaches stands of apricot trees will flower as they prepare to bear fruit for the year.
Hidden from public view inside an enormous donut-shaped main building: more fruit trees. Apple employees will enjoy gardens, a fountain, an open-air amphitheater, and a dining terrace nestled among apple orchards, a grove of apricot trees, and stands of plum trees. Cherry trees, again, will be dotted throughout.
Jobs worked in an orchard in his early years and wants to bring the blooms back to the area before tech companies moved in and made dead and lifeless cement jungle of the place.
Not surprising a man near death wanted to leave a legaccy celebrating life.
The large circular structure is just multi-level security to stop the worker drones from leaving the walled garden. Presumably aided by some story of the world ending when His Jobsness ascended into heaven to take over the place, and that everything outside the Walled Garden is poisonous and evil.
Did you know that the Pentagon (the world's biggest office building!) has twice as many bogs and canteens than it needs, so that blacks and whites would be separated? True story, it was designed and built during the segregation period.
You can pin many design crimes on Jobs (iPod headphones leak like an old whore) but sealed windows feature in all new buildings of large scale. That's so heat/cool don't fight each other, which would be a really serious problem with Californian summers.
Likewise, the windows are likely not shaded because of solar power use (PV panels need to go higher up, at an angle, not overshadowed by trees) but to reflect solar radiation and make cooling more efficient and (like in windscreens) prevent solar glare. Oh, and to make it look groovy (c:
Whoa, that's good shit Sherlock!
The canteen will hold 3,000! Any chance of an extra wide TV as well? Then while everyone is eating and watching, some lady athlete can run up and toss a hammer into the screen.
That aside there are no surprises.
Curved windows. Apple has always been big on custom parts.
Can't open windows. Like changing the battery on a MAC.
Apricot trees. The don't allow apple clones.
Custom power supply. (Just like the MAC.)
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